The present invention concerns information handling systems, and more specifically, interaction between personal computer/television convergence systems, electronic program guides (EPGs), and audio/video recording devices.
The home electronics industry, in the midst of an ongoing convergence of televisions and computers, has produced a new class of products, known as personal computer/television systems, or PC-TV systems. In their simplest form, these systems allow users to selectively switch between using a video monitor or display to watch television, or to support computer activities like word processing, creating spread sheets, playing computer games, or even surfing the internet. A seminal example, the Gateway Destination PC-TV system, from Gateway Inc., not only weds a television to a personal computer, but allows system expansion to receive programming from internal sources, such as video-cassette recorders (VCRs), digital versatile disk (DVD) players, laser disk players, and video cameras, as well as from external sources, such as cable, direct-broadcast satellite, etc.
The Destination, and other such systems, additionally include an automatic recording feature which allows users to instruct VCRs to automatically record specific upcoming television programs, days, weeks, or even months before they actually occur. The instructions typically designate a channel, a start time, and an end time, and the system logs, or registers, the instructions for future execution. Once registered, the system automatically selects the designated channel, as well as the starting and ending the recording at the designated times.
With the growth in the number of video channels, particularly cable and satellite television channels, many PC-TV systems now include an electronic program guidexe2x80x94a database listing available television channels and their program schedules. In these systems, an EPG operates as a user-prompted menu system, which logically organizes and displays thousands of program options. Typically, the user uses a wireless remote control to prompt display of EPG data, such as name, start time and end time, for a program currently being viewed. When the current program ends, the user, again using the remote control, can prompt display of EPG data for the next program. Additionally, the user can scroll through a listing of programs in the EPG data and select a program for recording using a record command. Selecting the record command automatically programs a VCR coupled to the EPG with the necessary channel, start time, and end time information.
Despite the utility and convenience of the EPG itself and its VCR-programming capability, PC-TV systems still suffer from at least two problems. The first problem is that the initiation of an EPG data display for any given program requires user input. This requirement typically means that the EPG is generally underemployed. The second problem is that the VCR clock that controls the starting and stopping of recording is too often either a few minutes behind or a few minutes ahead of the clock of a television broadcaster. Under these conditions, the VCR programmed to record a program either starts and stops recording before a desired program does, or starts and stops recording after the program does so. In either case, the resulting recording misses a portion of the desired program.
The user can ameliorate the recording timing problem in two ways. First, the user can program the VCR to start recording a few minutes earlier and end recording a few minutes later to ensure recording of the entire program, but this is generally inconvenient and wasteful of recording tape. And second, the user can spend extra time and effort to ensure synchronization of the VCR clock with the television broadcast clock. Although these measures often successfully avoid the timing problem, they generally fail when a broadcaster delays or interrupts a scheduled program with unscheduled programming, such as a special news report, or when a broadcaster lets a scheduled program, such an overtime football or basketball game, runs past its scheduled end time.
Accordingly, there is a need for a better way of controlling display or output of EPG data and a better way of controlling VCRs and other recording devices to record desired programming.
To address these and other problems, the present invention comprises methods and devices that detect specific signals or markers associated with a broadcast signal, and operate a recording device or an EPG based upon the detected signals or markers. Specifically, one exemplary method entails receiving a broadcast signal, detecting a program start or stop marker within the signal, and controlling the EPG or the recording device based upon this program start or stop marker information.
More specifically, operating the EPG entails initiating display or output of a first data set associated with a program upon detection of the program start marker, and initiating display of a second data set associated with another program upon detection of the program stop marker. Operating the recording device entails starting a recording of a program upon detection of the start marker, and stopping recording upon detection of the end marker.